Book Review: Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the resurrected Demons and Angels have once again piqued our interest in the mythic covert machinations of the Roman Catholic Church from antiquity to the present day. The Holy Grail has been the subject of adventure literature since first being introduced by Chrétien de Troyes in his 12th-century verse, Perceval, le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail), and a bit later by Robert de Boron in his Joseph d'Arimathie. Romance was added to the story by Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival in the early 13th century.

In modern climes, Brown is certainly not the first to make the ancient sexy. That distinction may be given to Umberto Ecco and his very fine Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. Ecco, however, was a bit dense to read and required a lot of the reader.

Brown, on the other hand, offered a well-digested story with a simple plot even the 21st-century ADD sensibilities could comprehend. With Brown’s publication came a deluge of books dealing with the story of the Grail and antiquities in general. While good reads, books like Steve Berry’s The Templar Legacy, Raymond Khoury’s The Last Templar, and Javier Sierra’s The Secret Supper pay precious little service to character development in their frantic effort to provide a page turner for the modern attention-deprived reader.

Happily, author Kate Mosse, with a craftsman’s care, spins two tales of intrigue separated by 800 years. Clinging to the tale of the 21st century Dr. Alice Tanner and her 12th century counterpart Alais du Mas (Pelletier) is the history and geography of modern-day Southwest France, the Languedoc, stronghold of the Cathar heresy, object of the Albigensian Crusade (1209 – 1229). Central to the Cathar movement was Carcassonne, home to the historic figure Raymond-Roger Trencavel, both characters in the novel. Also presented is a brief history and theology of Catharism as an enduring alternative to Roman thought.

Article Author: C. Michael Bailey

Arkansas son C. Michael Bailey has been in hiding since he revealed his family's abolitionist position prior to the War Between the States. He is a Senior Reviewer for All About Jazz and publisher of the webblog Kultur. Michael’s day job is spent as a clinical data analyst.
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